Having Sex for Fun is GOP no-no

Steven Jonas, Op_Ed_News

The seemingly sex-obsessed (if you listen to him enough) Rick Santorum tells us that: "Many in the Christian faith have said, 'Well, that's O.K. Contraception's O.K.' [Well] it's not O.K. because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be" (2). (One could get into a lengthy discussion of what Rick means by "how things are supposed to be," e.g., missionary position OK, but doggie style not, who would decide, and how would such decisions be enforced, especially by the GOP's beloved "small government." But that's another story.) Rush Limbaugh, like Santorum one of the leaders of the GOP (also seemingly sex-obsessed if you listen to him enough), tells us that women who use contraceptives do so just so they can have all the sex they want without having to worry about getting pregnant. (Of course they would not be able to have a legal abortion in GOP-world.) Since Limbaugh labeled one such woman as a "slut" and a "prostitute," in his mind non-procreative sex is obviously bad.

Limbaugh, Santorum, Blunt, Issa (and the list goes on and on) are obviously waging a war on women on a wide variety of fronts (3). But beyond that, either consciously or unconsciously they, like their forebears among the Catholic bishops of the Fourth Century, C.E., they are waging a war on sex for fun as well. Thus the issues broadens from a war on women to a war on everyone who engages in sex for fun, whether with a member of the opposite sex, the same sex, or in what has been called "sex for one" (4).
So this is what the GOP is becoming, as it proceeds to its conversion to what MSNBC/Huffington Post political analyst Howard Fineman has called "The American Faith Party" (5): "The American Sex-for-Fun is Bad" Party. If Limbaugh, Santorum, et al have their way, it will also become the Party of the Regulation of Sex. But hey, if they have their way on other regulatory fronts there will be a zillion environmental, transportation, health care, financial sector and what-have-you regulators out of work. What better way, especially in the promised "era of big-government-gone," than to put them back to work ---regulating sex.
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